Category: Recommendations

How Emptiness Sings

So, a few days ago I posted about hanging upside down at the ankles and it continues to illustrate this little time period quite well. When you’re hanging upside down (or at least when I am), everything loose is going to fall out – no matter how much you will against it. I had all sorts of things stuffed in my pockets (not much, but a little money and a few confident answers about what I was “going to do next”) and I don’t think I’ll get right-side-up again until everything is laying on the ground. It’s a strange perspective – watching the things I hold dear dislodge from their safe hiding place and pass in front of my eyes, landing with a little thump just out of reach. Like on Saturday, when I found out my cousin can drive the tractor/trailer for my uncle (my current “job” as fieldhand) while he combines soybeans. Yes, it’s pretty cool… until I realized that my only job security is that he has to be in 2nd grade on weekdays. That’s a tasty piece of humble pie.

I wrote a lot about the idea of a la orden (the idea that whatever you have – material or otherwise – is meant to be given away through an intentional effort to be available) when I was in Honduras. I guess you could say this little upside down trick is reminding me that what I’ve got to give is Christ, always and only… even if my pockets are completely empty.

Here’s a song from Christa Wells that is simple and sweet and … speaks to the beauty of emptiness. Here’s the last little bit:

I haven’t been asked yet to walk the hard roads
Still there’s a sense of deep loss in my soul
In the middle of a party, I’ll just want to go
Home.

But ooh,
My bow is on the strings,
I’m beginning to learn where to find the words
To the song that emptiness sings
Ooh, bow is on the strings:

Glory to God! Glory to God!
This is how emptiness sings, oh,
This is how emptiness sings
Hmmm, hmmm

How Emptiness Sings from Northview Church on Vimeo.

Posted on by Caroline 0

O Ancient of Days

Tonight, I sang this song in Spanish with my Micah brothers. We were a much smaller crowd, without the brass and the awesome bass solo, but the words rang just as true. Okay, so we didn’t have the eighties style vests or the flute solos either, but still… take a look.

I’m reminded of this Truth tonight – that His kingdom shall reign over all the earth and none can compare to His matchless work. And because of this Truth, we sing and sing and sing until our lungs wear out and then with joy we still sing.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

Tuesday Links

What will become of the library? This article by author and social change expert Seth Godin helps us navigate the evolving landscape of information systems. It’s not as “doomsday” as I thought… actually there is much hope for the library, if we understand and value the unique need it fills.

As long as we’re talking about books, check out this survey Tim Challies posted on his blog. The results are more than surprising… and worth a look. Here’s a sneak peek:

This article from the Gospel Coalition, “Making All Things New (Not all New Things)” by Pastor Tullian is such an encouragement. I can never be reminded of this too often.

I love this article, “The Sorting Table,” from the Curator about the grape harvest in Australia, even though sadness hangs over it like a blanket. It reminds me of my reflection about time inevitable march forward.

This article, “God of the Impossible,” from the Gospel Coalition is finally an example of what I’ve been trying to explain. Everyone takes in theology everyday. Maybe we don’t call it that and maybe we do, but the point is: we choose to expose our minds to certain beliefs, which in turn form a foundation on which to believe or filter everything else. There is no “throw away” knowledge. Every action has a reaction and every thought triggers another thought. The author, David Schrock, was persuaded by the first theologian who found a place on his night stand. For some people, the first theologian is Kierkegaard, others Donald Miller, and still others Martin Lloyd-Jones. What I love about this article is the beautiful reminder that theology is the study of God and we must remember that He is sovereign. I firmly believe that what we decide to think about, read, believe, discuss influences our theology… but I also believe God is sovereign and working in the midst of our human decisions. I praise God for that!

So, there’s a guy predicting the world will end on Saturday. This is Cal Thomas’s response in World Magazine.

Here is a great video from John Piper on Jesus’ strategy in Samaria. Piper says this story is in the Bible to encourage us in our pluralistic society.

This is the video that sparked my reflection on Kyrie Eleison yesterday – a promo for Fernando Ortega‘s new album. Beautiful.

I also LOVE this video from Alan Hirsch about how Christians are risk averse. We are too comfortable and it is hurting the Church.

Lastly, the film “Tree of Life” debuted this morning at the Cannes Festival and here’s what people are saying, via The Search blog. This makes me even MORE excited to see this film! I have to admit, because of Brett McCracken‘s slight obsession, I am intrigued by Terrence Malick as a director and as a person.

Okay, that’s enough linkage for now.

Have a GREAT Tuesday – let LOVE fly like cRaZy!

Posted on by Caroline 1

thoughts on Easter

As I thought over the past few days about the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection, I was tempted to stop several times because it’s just too much. It’s too much to think about how marvelous God must be to have a perfect, sovereign plan. It’s too much to figure out how many ways God set up history to reveal Christ’s glorious moment on the cross. It’s too much to understand the agony and suffering and war that must have waged in the very flesh of Christ during the final hours. It’s too much to grasp the encompassing all of Christ’s payment. It’s too much to believe that I can stand approved and righteous in front of a holy God because of Christ’s completed work and victory over the grave.

It’s too much.

I think so often we give up when it comes to understanding the Lord. We say things like, “Well, we’ll never understand anyway” or “Who are we to understand?” Sometimes it might be genuine awe of God’s greatness and sometimes it might just be laziness. What I’m realizing this week, through amazing conversations with friends and words in books and time spent with my Savior, is God’s intentionality in giving us a mind to understand. We cannot love a God we do not know. So, God gives us the ability, through our mind to become alive in our love for Him.

Regarding the command to love the Lord with all our mind, Piper says in his book Think, “loving him with all our mind means that our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express this heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.”

When we get lazy or distracted or discouraged, our thinking fails to engage fully, express deeply, and (most importantly) treasure God supremely. The strange thing is, the so-called shortcut is only hurting ourselves. When we choose to NOT treasure God supremely, we cannot experience the joy of all joys that flows out from this treasure!

I’m reading and processing and reading and processing. Is anyone else reading (or has read) the book Think by Piper? What are your thoughts? Here are some other things that I’ve been browsing that you might find interesting:

The Overflow of Easter: A whole theology of resurrection in one chapter

I’m kind of obsessed with this website: ChristianityExplored and not just because the people talk in English accents. I love that they answer hard questions and share personal stories about the power of God in their lives. If you need a little inspiration, check it out!

This quote is still so relevant today even though it was written in 1908 by G.K. Chesterton. This is pretty powerful stuff.

“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31-32

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with all your HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH
toward the Savior

Posted on by Caroline 0

bits and pieces

This week has made itself available for much reading and I have certainly taken advantage! I’m flipping real pages, but I can’t give you links for those. So, here’s some bits and pieces of the online variety. Enjoy!

This Holy week timeline is super helpful in figuring out the wheres and whens.

Check out this interview with Joe Thorn, author of Note to Self, on the Gospel Coalition website. Do you preach to yourself? Or do you listen to yourself? This is the question Thorn asks, in the tradition of the Puritan pastor Lloyd-Jones.

Do we really have to use a qualifier? Too often, Christians think there is art and then there is Christian art. This is more than strange because for centuries Christians or non-Christians could express themselves creatively and everyone called it art. I really appreciate this article that takes the unnecessary qualifier to task. There is no such thing as Christian art .

This article cannot be more timely after I just finished up a study on David with a friend. I love this reminder, as we look at the actions of a fearful Adonijah, “There is no need to run and hide when God has come near to us in Christ. We have been laid hold of by the one who has truly become the mercy seat. We are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” Check it out at the Gospel Coalition blog, written by a guy who is pretty close to my hometown in Iowa!

So, this guy John Mark McMillan is pretty cool. Check out this Death in His Grave commentary. The explanation of this song gives even more meaning and depth to an already soul-searching musical tale. I currently have this song on replay and it’s like victory every time it plays.

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Do you have any bits and pieces to add?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

some things for Saturday

Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago...
This is beautiful Chicago, where the Gospel Coalition conference happened this past week.

Last night I either had a really bad, really realistic dream… or I had some serious digestive problems. I won’t go into details (because you can still hope it was a dream) but apparently I got it all figured out in my sleep because I felt better this morning.

Today was my long run day. I say that like I’m on some kind of “plan” or something and I’m not. But, I kind of make up my own “plan” based on what I read on Runner’s World and how much my joints complain. It’s not scientific or anything, but saying it’s a “plan” makes it seem more official. Something I am realizing about 5 miles is that anything before 1 mile never feels awesome. I spend the first mile convincing myself running 5 is a good idea. Luckily, today I had Alistair Begg‘s incredible accent to accompany my steady stride.

I’m listening to all the speakers from the recent Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago you can find all the audio for FREE here but if you wait, I’m sure there will be video as well. I am impatient and convinced I’ll need to hear/see them twice anyway. I LOVE learning because it simultaneously expands my knowledge while giving me the distinct awareness that I know nothing! I know I’m not the only one thrilled about it either… so that makes me feel pretty good.

So, I’ve been listening to Keller, Mohler, Begg, Carson, Piper, and the others who were gathered in Chicago to treasure the Gospel in the Old Testament together. I just wish I could process through some of it … but I know God will provide those conversations in good time.

I have some pretty ambitious goals for books this week – I am almost too scared to write them down for fear I won’t finish. But, I will anyway: Competent to Counsel by Jay E. Adams, A King’s Cross by Tim Keller, revisit Dug Down Deep by Josh Harris, revisit Calvin (A heart for devotion, doctrine, and doxology), and chip away a bit more at the excerpts from the writings of people who influenced C.S. Lewis.

In addition, I’m going to crank out a newsletter – hopefully one that will have a special edition for the mission trip, which is a long time coming.

In the meantime, here’s a few videos you might enjoy:

I found the Jesus Storybook Bible read aloud recently and HAVE to share it! Seriously, take a minute to check it out and if you have kids, I’m sure they will love it. It’s a great way to share the story of Jesus with them this season!

CLICK HERE!

Here is an amazing time-lapse video that I hope will add a bit of awe and wonder to your night/day.

and lastly, a strange tangent. Is the adage “less is more” really true? What if the whole world was edited to give a certain experience? Check out this article from a brand blog I’ve been reading lately.

alright, folks. don’t forget to

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Tomorrow is another day of celebration! As we prepare to remember His death, it is with the beautiful knowledge that He also conquered it!

Posted on by Caroline 0

my mom misses my blog

the greatest group there ever was - mission 2011

I get to see this beautiful girl every day!
this was our good morning chocolate chip pancake day!

I miss it, too. I kept thinking of opening lines over the past few weeks, but they never found their way to the keyboard. I apologize for the absence of electronic words, but my excuse is that I’ve been living. I’m trudging through a great mix of emotions as I fill my days with sometimes the most random things. Yesterday was the Junior/Senior banquet… which made the end of this year even more final.

Well, my mom has suggested in more than one way that I will regret it if I don’t blog during these last months, so I am going to throw out some bullet points to get started. This is a mezcla of things I’ve been up to lately:

  • I am just eating up every message from the Gospel Coalition Conference that’s happening right now in Chicago. They are not only posting the plenary sessions online for free, they also made the live hymn sing available! Go check it out, download it all and then send me a message so we can talk about it! The only (BIG) downside to not being there is the discussion that I’m sure is happening over coffee and around book tables.
  • This quote by John Stott, as I think about the cross,

“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you.  It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’  Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.  All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.  It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

John R. W. Stott

  • I love this new blog I found llevo el invierno where a super creative, crafty lady from Monterrey, Mexico posts some great stuff! Also enjoying this and this.
  • I have found out that working out and strength training doesn’t necessarily mean slimmer… I feel like I’m training to be a football player or something!!
  • This year is winding down and I’m all mixed up with how to feel about it. The seniors have 23 days of school left and I’m getting as weepy as they are! I have other students in and out of my office and I try hard to keep my emotions at bay because if I don’t there’s no controlling them, they’ll just go crazy!
  • The Nichols siblings are about to embark on a half-marathon journey for the fall. I’m super pumped to do this with my sister and brothers (praying for James’s injuries to be completely gone in time to train). This is something I’m so excited about, amidst all the other confusion and changes.
  • Mission trip momentum… this is the time where I need to be praying the hardest for my students. They are getting attacked on every side by people and things that say they should be “over” the mission trip by now, but in their hearts they know it’s a lifestyle they’ve been called to. I love them so incredibly much and want to pray them into the Lord’s presence!
  • Next year. Oh heavens! The Lord has this, too, in His hands.
  • Semana Santa is next week and I have a lot of hangout time planned with students, as well as some goals to spend some reflective time with books and words and writing and (yes) even my blog. I want to hit up the stations of the cross with these Songs for Lent, which you can pick up for free.
  • I have been doing this really cool fast/pray/give thing with Living Water as a practice for Lent and I’ve got nothing but good reflection about it. Hard at times, but good.
  • Tonight I made a bucket list of sorts for the seniors/students/mission trip/me and it is completely unfinished but even as I was writing it I felt excitement and sadness go back and forth like ping pong in my soul.
Okay, well I guess I’m back in blogging action.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
once again!
Posted on by Caroline 0

Saturday CLICKS

I’m trying to take it easy this morning… gathering last minute details, watching a sermon, getting a workout in, and some intentional time set apart for reading after my bags have been packed for the week. So, instead of writing a monstrous post about last-day preparations for the mission trip next week, I just wanted to post some links. Have at it and enjoy your Saturday!!

Most typical person – I am still not sure how I found this, but it was interesting to read. Somehow, the National Geographic has come up with the “most typical person” … but they project this person will change in the next few years. Apparently, he will be from India instead of China.

Libya and migrant workers – I am trying to keep up on the conflict in Africa, but with every news story I just feel more frustrated or sad or helpless. This is an article about the migrant workers who have no place to go (because they likely fled a country where they were in danger).

Keller on the Importance of Hell – Of all the posts that are flying around about Rob Bell’s new book, there are many I would suggest. I like Keller’s writing because I think it stands solely on the Word. He very reasonably and calmly lays out the importance of hell in the Gospel message and Who says it is important.

Newest Late Night Snack – This is just random… apparently Ben and Jerry’s unveiled a new ice cream flavor in honor of Jimmy Fallon’s late night show spot. Get this: it has potato chips in/on it! They have heard the desperate cries of those who can’t choose between salty and sweet! Haha.

Adjustment Bureau review – I just appreciated this review of an upcoming movie. I don’t see a lot of films, but I like to think critically about them when I do.

Reviews of Children’s books – This is such a cool site that helps us weed through the massive amounts of children’s literature these days. I am not a teacher, but I hope to be a very aware mom someday. I think I’ll be using this site a lot!

PJ Cockrell writes about Keller’s book, “King’s Cross” – How many times have you gone to church and walked out with a good helping of moral advice? That’s the problem… Keller says the Gospel is not advice – it’s NEWS. Partly because I wish I was reading this book and partly because I love where Cockrell takes his thoughts, I really appreciated this post.

Gospel Coalition Conference 2011 – I am really, really struggling with how much I want to go to this conference. I scrounged to find cheap tickets and now I’m at the pros/cons place of decision-making and I don’t know where I’ll end up with that. All I know is, this is going to be unbelievable! 70+ speakers of the highest quality, a hymn sing from some of the best musicians, and two additional seminars (one on hell and the other on being missional in cities)… this is an event I want to be a part of!!

alright now,

let LOVE fly like cRaZy!

Posted on by Caroline 0

Click on THIS

Today seemed like a good day to come across random (but extremely useful) information. I can’t help but share it with you!

  • Here is a very good article that showed up in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Where Have the Good Men Gone?” I could write endless posts about this and all the irony I find subtly peeking out from behind the words. Really? Women are asking this question after fighting so hard to have incredibly lower expectations for the opposite sex? With the popularity of Knocked Up and Sex and the City, are we really surprised?
  • This video is a clip from the film “Expelled” with Ben Stein. I wrote about this film when I first found it, but I like this clip for how it reveals the confusion we face today in the academic arena.
  • This article reminds me of the good old days at Hope College with Professor Herrick and the Rhetoric class I loved so much! Here, Tim Challies writes a short history of communication and directs our thoughts to critically examining the development of sending, receiving, and storing messages through language.
  • I like to hold a book in my hand. I’m sorry for those who have tried to convince me to go the way of the digital… you will always fail. This author had a, let’s just say, “come to pages” moment where she realized how flipping a page is an experience. Go ahead and read it, all you haters of the old fashioned book. 🙂
  • This article from freakonomics is too good to pass up. If any high-brow coast dweller ever questioned the intelligence of those living in the breadbasket, this is proof positive we can hold our own…. well, in Kansas…. in 1895, that is. This is an 8th grade test. See how well you do!
  • I was baptized as a baby in the Lutheran church, but in 2nd grade my family moved to the Evangelical Free denomination and by 20 I wanted to make my own decision to be baptized. So, I was baptized twice. Some denominations won’t even perform the second baptism. For these reasons and others, I am glad to read do a little research. I want to know where I stand so I will be able to make informed decisions about what I believe about baptism. Here is a great article I found over at The Gospel Coalition blog called, “Should We Baptize Small Children? Yes”

I am so, so very tired right now. It’s one of those tired feelings that I should have shaken hours ago by BEING in BED. So, with that I’ll sign off tonight!

let LOVE fly like cRazY

Posted on by Caroline 0